Pentax Spotmatic - The First Superstar SLR

  Updated Apr. 27, 2022

   Domination of the mid-to-late 1960's sales charts. Millions of devoted fans. As influential on SLR development as a certain group of four blokes were on rock 'n' roll during the same period. We can only be talking about one camera...the Pentax Spotmatic (or Spottie to its ardent admirers), the first true superstar SLR. 

 Genesis

​     September 1960. Germany. While a five-man band just freshly minted as the Beatles are honing their craft in the clubs of Hamburg, over 400 km (250 miles) away in Cologne, at the Photokina tradeshow, the Asahi Optical Company is creating a buzz of its own. They have just unveiled a prototype SLR featuring a built-in TTL (through-the-lens) spotmeter. Appropriately designated SPOT-MATIC (note the hyphen), the camera also features a 1/2000 sec. top speed shutter and a bayonet lens mount (15 years before the K-mount debuted in 1975!). The meter consists of a CdS (cadmium sulfide) cell that swings into the light path at the press of a button to take a light reading and then swings out of the way prior to exposure. This reading is shown by means of a center-the-needle display in the viewfinder. 

 
  A Shooting Star

    Fast forward four years and the SPOTMATIC finally reaches production, and the Beatles finally reach America. But there have been a few changes. The Beatles now consist of four members (with only three of them dating from their 1960 debut in Hamburg) and sporting quite a different look. Very late in development, Pentax decides that a spot meter may be a little advanced for their target audience...so, they make the change to an averaging meter that they believe will be easier for the amateur photographer to use. But the marketing materials have already been prepared and the dies cast for the nameplates. Plus, Spotmatic still sounds better than Average-o-matic or Meter-matic ;-). Along with the hyphen, the production camera loses the 1/2000 sec. shutter speed and the bayonet mount is dropped in favor of the existing M42 screwmount. The swinging metering cell has also been replaced by two fixed cells located beside the finder eyepiece under the top plate.
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   The Spottie is an unparalleled success! It is the single best-selling SLR from any camera company every year from 1965 to 1970. Annual Spotmatic production alone is greater than the total combined SLR production of Canon and Nikon from 1966 to 1969. Over 3.6 million Spotmatics of all ilks are eventually made. Can you say SOOPAH-STAH?!! Oh, and the Beatles merely have 20 Billboard number 1 hits and sell only 28.5 million albums in the US during the same time period. 

     The Spotmatic is not the first SLR to feature TTL metering, nor does it necessarily have the best integration of TTL metering. Both the Topcon RE Super (1962) and Alpa 9d (1963) beat the Pentax to market. Nevertheless, it is the Spotmatic that captures the hearts of photographers. What does it have that the others don't? Most importantly, it's relatively affordable. The other two cameras are much more expensive...like Nikon F-and-higher-expensive. Also, it has a familiar look and control layout. The Spottie is really only the latest in a line of Pentax models (that members of the Beatles already are using, by the way) that have reached a very high level of refinement. The controls are simple and move with precision. You just feel a certain something when you hold it in your hand, the milled film advance lever wonderfully smooth and positive in its action, and that responsive shutter release. Pure mechanical poetry. The Super Takumar line of lenses are already very popular and are completely compatible with this new model. And the new metering system is very easy to understand and use. It's the right camera, at the right time, at the right price. And it will take its rightful place in the Pentax pantheon, spawning at least six more Pentax M42 screwmount models and and serving as the genetic basis for the K-series SLRs (including the prototypical student-camera, the K1000, which will be produced into the late-'90s). As a side note: Pentax made motor drive versions of various Spotmatic models in very limited quantities; they were special order items, and command high prices as such.

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  The Spotmatic Family Tree

   Mechanical Models

    1964 - SPOTMATIC aka SP

• 1/1000 - 1 sec. shutter speeds + Bulb
• ASA/ISO 20 - 1600
• Self-timer
• FP & X-sync flash terminals
• 160-degree film advance stroke
• Use a 387S silver oxide cell to power the meter. A 394-380 cell can be used with an o-ring if you cannot get a 387S. The 387S is essentially a 394-380 that comes with a plastic ring to bring it to the correct overall diameter of 11.6mm to match the original PX400 mercury battery.

    1971 - SPOTMATIC II/IIa aka SPII

• ASA/ISO expanded from 20 - 3200​
• Flash hot shoe now integrated on re-shaped prism housing
• Improved shutter & self-timer, slightly brighter viewfinder, and improved film transport
• The IIa was a US-only Honeywell-badged model with built-in sensor for the Strobolar flash system
• Same battery options as the SPOTMATIC.

    1971 - SP500

• Budget version of the original Spotmatic, with no self-timer and 1/500 sec. top shutter speed. Contains many of the internal improvements made to the Spotmatic II.
• There was an unmarked detent for the 1/1000 sec. setting, but there was no cam in place to regulate the speed accurately

    1973 - SPOTMATIC F

• Final high-end version of the mechanical Spottie
• Finally, full-aperture metering on a mechanical Pentax, albeit only with Super-Multi-Coated (SMC) Takumar lenses. Older Takumars still require stop-down metering.
• Added a shutter release lock
• Use the SR44/357 silver oxide battery with a 10mm (3/8") o-ring to ensure proper fit
• New embossed pattern on the leatherette panels 
• Otherwise, specs were identical to SPII
• Immediate ancestor to Pentax KM (1975).

    1973 - SP1000

• Final budget version, successor to SP500
• As model number indicates, top shutter speed was now 1/1000 sec.
• The final Spotmatic model in production
• Same battery options as the original Spotmatic
• Immediate ancestor to Pentax K1000 (1976).

   Electronic Models

    1971 - ELECTRO SPOTMATIC/ES

• First electronic aperture-priority-equipped SLR to market 
• 8 - 1/1000 sec. stepless shutter speeds with mechanical backups from 1/60 - 1/1000 + Bulb
• Full-aperture metering with new SMC Takumar lenses, utilized stop-down metering with older Takumars; Meter only works in AUTO mode
• ASA/ISO 20 - 1600. Film speed setting now concentric to rewind crank
• Requires a type-544/PX28(L) 6V battery
• Self-timer deleted to make room for battery compartment
• Different metering display in viewfinder with shutter speed scale and needle
• The original ELECTRO SPOTMATIC (Serial numbers are 35xxxxx) was basically a prototype sold only in Japan. The full-production version (Serial numbers 55xxxxx) was more reliable, and was modified mid-run into the ES (Serial numbers 65xxxxx) with further improvements to its circuitry.

    1973 - ESII

• ASA/ISO 20 - 3200
• Requires 4 - SR44/357 1.5V silver oxide batteries
• Self-timer & shutter lock added
• Exposure compensation dial added with +2 EV to -1 EV range  
• Immediate ancestor to the Pentax K2 (1975).

 The Star Begins to Fade

     Pentax initially could not keep up with the demand for the Spotmatic. And this was where they began to pay a price for their success. The other major Japanese manufacturers were quick to jump on the TTL bandwagon with the Nikkormat FT (1965), Minolta SRT-101 (1966), and Canon FT (1966). While the Canon emulated the stop-down metering procedure of the Spotmatic (meaning that the aperture must be stopped-down and the viewfinder darkened to get the proper reading, then opened back up so focusing can be done at full aperture with a bright viewfinder), the Nikon and Minolta models featured full-aperture TTL metering (meaning metering takes place at wide-open aperture, with camera automatically compensating to get the proper reading; which eliminates the extra stop-down procedure). In trying to catch Pentax, the other camera makers were forced to innovate and improve their own SLRs. With Pentax selling SPs as fast as they could make them, stopping production, even momentarily, to introduce major improvements was too tough a pill to swallow. That Pentax was capable of innovation was not in doubt; their prototypes reflected that they clearly saw where SLR development needed to go. The Metalica II prototype of 1966 featured an electronically-controlled, vertical-travel shutter, aperture priority auto exposure, and, again, a bayonet lens mount. Due to the Spotmatic's continued popularity, however, they delayed the introduction of full-aperture metering until the Electro Spotmatic of 1971 & Spotmatic F of 1973 and the K-mount bayonet did not appear until 1975. Such hesitation would lead to a long and winding road of sales decline from 1969 until the debut of the K-series SLRs.

    Annual Spotmatic production peaked in 1968 at approximately 500,000 units. From then on, things would only go downhill as far as Pentax' domination of the market was concerned. Why? Let's consider a couple of reasons:

1. The enthusiast SLR market is finite. And the Spotmatic's superb performance and build quality ensured that its owners would get many years, if not decades, of use out of their cameras. An enthusiast will only buy a new camera if: 1) their previous model has broken beyond cost-effective repair, or 2) a new model offers capabilities that make upgrading desirable. And, in the second case, they often have to be convinced that they need to upgrade (here is where marketing comes in ;-)). By 1969-70, the market for mechanical-shuttered manual exposure SLRs was moving toward a saturation point. Thus, with around 2 million Spotmatics sold by 1970, that meant 2 million fewer potential customers. Why? Because they already had an SLR that was not by a long shot obsolete or in danger of breaking beyond repair (and this was still in an age when cameras were designed to be repaired and serviced rather easily). 
2. Therefore, the only possibility for further growth was to attract new customers to the enthusiast SLR market or from other manufacturers. Pentax faced greater challenges in these areas by the early 1970's because of: 1) delaying the introduction of full-aperture metering and, 2) more importantly, failing to move to a bayonet-style lens mount until 1975. The original motivation for Pentax' adoption of the M42 screwmount, introduced by VEB Zeiss Ikon in 1949, was its non-proprietary, near-universal status. They were looking to attract photographers who already owned European or Russian-made M42 lenses to use them on a new Asahi body. From the late 1950's and onward, however, proprietary bayonet mounts were introduced by multiple manufacturers (including Minolta, Nikon, and Canon with its similar breech-lock mount). The bayonet permitted far quicker and simpler lens mounting and dismounting. The M42 mount requires 2 3/4 (990 degrees) turns to mount/dismount a lens, while being reasonably careful not to cross-thread the lens to the body. A bayonet, on the other hand, only requires a lens to be indexed via a dot, inserted into the mount, and turned only between 50 - 70 degrees to be mounted. The convenience and speed of the bayonet was a major selling point for Pentax' competitors. By the early '70's, the Nikkormat FTn, Minolta SRT-101, Canon's new FTb, and the Olympus OM-1 were all more advanced than the Spotmatic in these two areas, and steadily ate into Pentax' market share. 

   Just how important was a bayonet mount? Well, in 1974, the last year of the all-Spotmatic M42-mount lineup, sales were just over 300,000. In 1975, a year of overlap between M42 and the new K-mount, Spotmatic sales dropped by about 20,000, but sales of the 3 new K-models totaled 300,000. And half of those K-mount sales were of the KM model, which was basically a Spotmatic F with a bayonet mount. It makes one wonder if Pentax could have avoided a large portion of its seven-year sales decline from 1968-74 by introducing a bayonet mount earlier.

 Conclusion

   Spotmatic. It defines the classic paradigm of the mechanical SLR: simplicity and precision construction. It changed the way SLRs were used; you could keep the camera to your eye while metering, no longer looking back and forth between it and a handheld meter. It spurred its competitors to greater efforts, and so played a pivotal role in the evolution of the SLR. Definitely superstar material. Even the Fab Four would surely approve :-).

  References:

     Pentax: 1964 -1976: The Spotmatic @ http://www.pentax-slr.com/71760549
     Asahi Pentax Spotmatic - 1964 @ http://basepath.com/Photography/Spotmatic.php
     Pentax Spotmatic, Spotmatic II, Spotmatic F User Manuals @ www.butkus.org
     Pentax ES & ESII User Manuals @ www.butkus.org
     The Definitive Asahi Pentax Collector's Guide 1952-1977 by Gerjan van Oosten